Friday, 26 July 2013

Redlands Estate

Redlands was established in
1819 when the land was granted to George Frederick Read, the son of King George
IV of England.
George Frederick was not formally recognized by the crown because his mother
was married to the King when he was still the Prince Regent. During their
marriage, they amassed a huge debt due to a lavish lifestyle. The Prince’s
father, George III, forced Prince George to divorce his wife and marry a Duchess
whose large dowry helped cover the prince’s debts.

Young George Frederick was given the surname of his wet nurse,
“Read” and was sent off to the merchant navy in the early 1800’s. He became
very successful and eventually settled in Australia
around 1815 and began acquiring properties across Tasmania
including what became Redlands.

The oldest building on the site is the Bakery which was
constructed in 1822 and is considered to be the oldest continuously used bake
oven in Australia.
Like all the other buildings at Redlands,
the bricks were made on site and its likely the roof shingles were made from
split timber removed to make way for the developing farmland. The bakehouse has
been restored and is used to bake old style loaves of bread that can be
purchased on site.

Many convicts lived and worked at Redlands from 1819 until the end of transportation
in the 1850’s. Redland predates Port
Arthur by around 12 years and in the early days of Van
Diemens Land, convicts were assigned to land owners to help create buildings
and farmland. Convict labour was used at Redlands
to develop bushland into fertile farmland, make bricks for the buildings (over
500,000 convict bricks were fired in a kiln that was located near the weir on
the nearby PlentyRiver.

The convicts also
hand dug over 5kms of canals throughout Redlands,
which was the first farm in Tasmania
to be fully irrigated using gravity. Some of the canals were lined with Huon
Pine. Some of the canals can still be seen in the main yard of the estate.

The convicts were housed in tenement buildings which were
constructed as two story rooms by convict made bricks. Once the convicts left
the site, the tenement building was used to house seasonal hop pickers.
According to reports, the convicts were also housed in a cellar at the end of
the tenement building. This cellar was converted in the early 1900’s to house a
wood heater used to dry tobacco when Redlands
grew tobacco for a short time.

There was also a separate set of hop pickers huts which
accommodated one to two people. These were situated on the other side of the
main yard and were surrounded by towering poplar trees which formed a kind of
“poplar cathedral” around the huts. This area really retains a mystical feel
when you enter the area.

Built in 1867 is the Oast House which was one of three built
at Redlands.
This construction marked the start of Redlands
100 years as one of the country’s largest hop farms. At its peak Redlands grew hops on 50
acres and had over 250 workers and their families living and working on the
site. The surviving Oast house was constructed with convict bricks and was one
of three originally on the site. The others unfortunately fell into disrepair
and were pulled down in the 70’s & 80s, coinciding with the downturn in the
hops industry.

From the late 1860’s to the 1970’s, Redlands Estate was a
large and productive hop farm and had its own cobblestone village which
included a bakery, general store, butcher and belltower to service the workers
and their families who lived on the farm during hop picking season. The general
store was stocked with goods and merchandise for the workers to purchase and
was serviced by businesses from New Norfolk. Permanent employees and hop
pickers received meat supplies twice a week from cattle killed on the property.
The bell in the belltower was rung to start and finish the work day and also in
the case of emergencies.

Redlands House, the main manor house of the estate is a
beautifully conserved family home and shows all the grandeur of the 1840s. It
is in magnificent condition and is still used as a family home to this day.

Amongst the beautiful English style gardens that surround the house, is an area
that was known as the “SecretGarden”! This part of the
garden was out of bounds to the hop pickers and was reserved for the family and
managers of the estate. There was only one way to enter the “SecretGarden”
and that was through a door in the manager’s office which opened directly into
the garden. With over 400 people working on site during the heights of hops season, the need for privacy was understandable. The secret garden features a
huge Magnolia Grandiflora which is one of the oldest magnolias in Tasmania. The gardens
were not always private as in the early days the area contained a public bath.
The exact site of the bath has yet to be located but is thought to be behind the
tennis court towards the back of the tenement buildings.

An interesting sideline to the history of the Redlands occurred on a
winters evening in August 1845 when the manor house was held up at gunpoint by
the notorious bushranger, William Westwood aka Jacky Jacky! The lessee of Redlands at the time, Mr
Harrison, was ill in bed upstairs while his wife and son in law were
downstairs. Through the front door of the house, the armed bushranger burst in.
Within half an hour, Jacky Jacky and his collegues had rounded up the convicts and
workers and all the prisoners were tied up on the kitchen floor. More
information regarding the hold up can be found on information signs at the
front door of the house.

Redlands Estate is literally steeped in early colonial
history and is a wonderfully preserved example of a colonial estate with manor
house and out buildings. These days Redlands
grows wheat and barley and is the home of the recently established Redlands
Distillery. The Redlands Distillery is one of two “paddock to bottle” single
malt whiskey distilleries in the world. There are great plans for the
redevelopment of Redlands,
including the refurbishing of the tenement buildings to provide colonial style
accommodation.

The ongoing works around Redlands
are finding new things of historical significance regularly. Recently, during
routine gravel maintenance of the yard, a sandstone road, most likely built by
convicts between the 1820’s and 1840’s using sandstone from a quarry near the
railway bridge on the nearby Derwent River, was discovered in front of the Oast
house. Fantastic!!

I spent a good half day wandering the grounds and taking in
the colonial atmosphere. A wonderful place to visit with plenty more to see
than what has been mentioned in the text.

2 comments:

Nod.. it makes sense that the convicts would have been housed in tenement buildings which were constructed as two storey rooms. But it there is even a nicer sense of continuity in that cnce the convicts went elsewhere, the tenement building was provided housing to seasonal hop pickers. Three large Oast Houses suggest that the property must have been going very well indeed, at least until it was not.

I can see from your notes that Redlands was near the Derwent River, but where was it exactly?

Hi Hels,Thanks for your comments.Redlands Estate is in Plenty, approx 8 mins from New Norfolk. next door to the Salmon PondsRedlands Estate759 Glenora RoadPlenty TAS 7140(next left after the Salmon Ponds)Regards

Welcome to my Blog!!

Welcome to my blog, "On The Convict Trail".

Since moving to Tasmania in August 2012, I have been able to indulge in my hobby & passion for Australian Convict & Colonial history. There is so much to see and learn about Australia's colonial past here in Tasmania and not just from the more well known sites such as Port Arthur.

This is very much a hobby for me and so my aim is to spend as much of my spare time as I can visiting as many of these historic sites and towns and photographing as much as I can, then post the photos on the blog along with some information and links to any official websites for the sites/towns.

The vast majority of the photographs are ones that I have taken myself. The historical photos and some others that appear in some of the posts are sourced from the internet and used for context to help tell the story of the subject. The information for each of the posts has mainly been sourced from websites and webpages that are freely available by searching through the internet and is therefore assumed to be as factually correct as possible. If you have any further information regarding any of the posts or believe that the supplied information is factually incorrect, please don't hesitate to leave a message in the comments with an email address or email me on the email listed below and I will make contact asap in order to rectify the information.

I hope you enjoy the photographs, information and links and it may just encourage you to check things out for yourselves and find out about our fantastic convict & colonial history...much of which is never taught in our schools...at least it wasnt when I went to school!

Cheers

Geoff

Contact Me

Email Address

joff1962@gmail.com

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For anyone visiting Tasmania, a selection of photos that appear throughout the blog can be seen displayed and available to purchase at a number of galleries and souvenir shops. All photos are fully matted and mounted on foam board and ready for framing.

Please contact / visit the following galleries to check out a selection of my photos.